Activist To Close Main Office Anti-abortion Group Keeps Chapters Open

WASHINGTON -- Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry announced on Wednesday that his Operation Rescue headquarters is nearly bankrupt and will close within two weeks.

But the organization will continue its sit-ins and rallies through about 125 affiliated chapters around the nation, Terry said.

``The movement has gone on without me and will continue without me,`` he said at a hastily called news conference during the annual convention of the National Religious Broadcasters.

Terry spoke just 16 hours after being released from a prison camp in Alpharetta, Ga., where he had spent 4 1/2 months after refusing to pay a fine for blocking an Atlanta abortion clinic in 1988. He said he did not know who had paid the $550 fine.

The Operation Rescue headquarters in Binghamton, N.Y., is expected to close in seven to 10 days. Terry said Attorney General Dick Thornburgh on Dec. 22 seized its bank account, which held $2,700 at the time.

He said he chose to make the announcement at the NRB convention as ``a plea to the Christian community to oppose this tyranny .... In the last 2 1/2 years, there has been an unprecedented attack on nonviolent rescuers.``

Terry decried the police beatings and jailings of hundreds of Operation Rescue activists. He also denounced the use of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to prosecute anti-abortion groups.

He accused the media of systematically ignoring the violence, calling them ``moral cowards`` and ``intellectual lapdogs.``

Joining him at the news conference was the Rev. Pat Mahoney, director of the allied Center for Christian Activism, based in Boca Raton. Mahoney, who said he is scheduled to go on trial Friday on charges of trying to block an abortion clinic in Coral Springs last October, called on President Bush to speak out on the violence.

``He was elected mainly on the coattails of the pro-life movement,`` Mahoney said. ``He must be held accountable for his silence.``

Terry said the Operation Rescue headquarters is $70,000 in debt, much of it in unpaid wages for its two dozen employees.

He said a $50,000 fine imposed by a New York court in a lawsuit filed by the National Organization for Women hurt Operation Rescue`s fund-raising efforts and helped put the group in debt.

The fine is being appealed, but the judgment in the New York case ``unfortunately has driven us to the brink of bankruptcy,`` he said.

Terry said he plans to take some time off to be with his family in Binghamton, and then plans to help mobilize support for the families of jailed anti-abortion activists.

He said Joseph Foreman, of Rescue Atlanta, is the acting director of the organization. Foreman, who also was at the news conference, said the Atlanta chapter plans a ``continual effort`` to halt or slow down the abortion rate there.